W.E.B. DuBois Critiques Booker T. Washington
The most influential public critique of Booker T. Washington’s policy of racial
accommodation and gradualism came in 1903 when black leader and intellectual W.E.B.
DuBois published an essay in his collection The Souls of Black Folk with the title “Of
Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others.” DuBois rejected Washington’s willingness to
avoid rocking the racial boat, calling instead for political power, insistence on civil rights,
and the higher education of Negro youth.
Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others
From birth till death enslaved;
in word, in deed, unmanned!
Hereditary bondsmen! Know ye not
Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?
BYRON
Easily the most striking thing in the history of the American Negro since 1876 is the
ascendancy of Mr. Booker T. Washington. It began at the time when war memories and
ideals were rapidly passing; a day of astonishing commercial development was dawning;
a sense of doubt and hesitation overtook the freedmen’s sons,—then it was that his
leading began. Mr. Washington came, with a single definite programme, at the
psychological moment when the nation was a little ashamed of having bestowed so much
sentiment on Negroes, and was concentrating its energies on Dollars. His programme of
industrial education, conciliation of the South, and submission and silence as to civil and
political rights, was not wholly original; the Free Negroes from 1830 up to wartime had
striven to build industrial schools, and the American Missionary Association had from
the first taught various trades; and Price and others had sought a way of honorable
alliance with the best of the Southerners. But Mr. Washington first indissolubly linked
these things; he put enthusiasm, unlimited energy, and perfect faith into this programme,
and changed it from a by-path into a veritable Way of Life. And the tale of the methods
by which he did this is a fascinating study of human life.
It startled the nation to hear a Negro advocating such a programme after many decades of
bitter complaint; it startled and won the applause of the South, it interested and won the
admiration of the North; and after a confused murmur of protest, it silenced if it did not
convert the Negroes themselves.
To gain the sympathy and cooperation of the various elements comprising the white
South was Mr. Washington’s first task; and this, at the time Tuskegee was founded,
seemed, for a black man, well-nigh impossible. And yet ten years later it was done in the
word spoken at Atlanta:“In all things purely social we can be as separate as the five
fingers, and yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.” This“Atlanta
Compromise” is by all odds the most notable thing in Mr. Washington’s career. The
South interpreted it in different ways: the radicals received it as a complete surrender of
the demand for civil and political equality; the conservatives, as a generously conceived
working basis for mutual understanding. So both approved it, and today its author is
certainly the most distinguished Southerner since Jefferson Davis, and the one with the
largest personal following.
Next to this achievement comes Mr. Washington’s work in gaining place and
consideration in the North. Others less shrewd and tactful had formerly essayed to sit on
these two stools and had fallen between them; but as Mr. Washington knew the heart of
the South from birth and training, so by singular insight he intuitively grasped the spirit
of the age which was dominating the North. And so thoroughly did he learn the speech
and thought of triumphant commercialism, and the ideals of material prosperity that the
picture of a lone black boy poring over a French grammar amid the weeds and dirt of a
neglected home soon seemed to him the acme of absurdities. One wonders what Socrates
and St. Francis of Assisi would say to this….
Among his own people, however, Mr. Washington has encountered the strongest and
most lasting opposition, amounting at times to bitterness, and even to-day continuing
strong and insistent even though largely silenced in outward expression by the public
opinion of the nation. Some of this opposition is, of course, mere envy; the
disappointment of displaced demagogues and the spite of narrow minds. But aside from
this, there is among educated and thoughtful colored men in all parts of the land a feeling
of deep regret, sorrow, and apprehension at the wide currency and ascendancy which
some of Mr. Washington’s theories have gained. These same men admire his sincerity of
purpose, and are willing to forgive much to honest endeavor which is doing something
worth the doing. They cooperate with Mr. Washington as far as they conscientiously can;
and, indeed, it is no ordinary tribute to this man’s tact and power that, steering as he must
between so many diverse interests and opinions, he so largely retains the respect of all.
Booker T. Washington arose as essentially the leader not of one race but of two,—a
compromiser between the South, the North, and the Negro. Naturally the Negroes
resented, at first bitterly, signs of compromise which surrendered their civil and political
rights, even though this was to be exchanged for larger chances of economic
development. The rich and dominating North, however, was not only weary of the race
problem, hut was investing largely in Southern enterprises, and welcomed any method of
peaceful cooperation. Thus, by national opinion, the Negroes began to recognize Mr.
Washington’s leadership; and the voice of criticism was hushed.
Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and
submission; but adjustment at such a peculiar time as to make his programme unique.
This is an age of unusual economic development, and Mr. Washington’s programme
naturally takes an economic cast, becoming a gospel of Work and Money to such an
extent as apparently almost completely to overshadow the higher aims of life. Moreover,
this is an age when the more advanced races are coming in closer contact with the less
developed races, and the race-feeling is therefore intensified; and Mr. Washington’s
programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races. Again, in our
own land, the reaction from the sentiment of war time has given impetus to raceprejudice against Negroes, and Mr. Washington withdraws many of the high demands of
Negroes as men and American citizens. In other periods of intensified prejudice all the
Negro’s tendency to self-assertion has been called forth; at this period a policy of
submission is advocated. In the history of nearly all other races and peoples the doctrine
preached at such crises has been that manly self-respect is worth more than lands and
houses, and that a people who voluntarily surrender such respect, or cease striving for it,
are not worth civilizing.
In answer to this, it has been claimed that the Negro can survive only through
submission. Mr. Washington distinctly asks that black people give up, at least for the
present, three things, —
First, political power,
Second, insistence on civil rights,
Third, higher education of Negro youth,
— and concentrate all their energies on industrial education, the accumulation of wealth,
and the conciliation of the South. This policy has been courageously and insistently
advocated for over fifteen years, and has been triumphant for perhaps ten years. As a
result of this tender of the palm-branch, what has been the return? In these years there
have occurred:
1. The disfranchisement of the Negro.
2. The legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for the Negro.
3. The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of the Negro.
These movements are not, to be sure, direct results of Mr. Washington’s teachings; but
his propaganda has, without a shadow of doubt, helped their speedier accomplishment.
The question then comes: Is it possible, and probable, that nine millions of men can make
effective progress in economic lines if they are deprived of political rights, made a servile
caste, and allowed only the most meagre chance for developing their exceptional men? If
history and reason give any distinct answer to these questions, it is an emphatic No. And
Mr. Washington thus faces the triple paradox of his career:
1. He is striving nobly to make Negro artisans business men and property-owners; but it
is utterly impossible, under modern competitive methods, for workingmen and propertyowners to defend their rights and exist without the right of suffrage .
2. He insists on thrift and self-respect, but at the same time counsels a silent submission
to civic inferiority such as is bound to sap the manhood of any race in the long run.
3. He advocates common-school and industrial training, and depreciates institutions of
higher learning; but neither the Negro common-schools, nor Tuskegee itself, could
remain open a day were it not for teachers trained in Negro colleges, or trained by their
graduates….
The growing spirit of kindliness and reconciliation between the North and South after the
frightful difference of a generation ago ought to be a source of deep congratulation to all,
and especially to those whose mistreatment caused the war; but if that reconciliation is to
be marked by the industrial slavery and civic death of those same black men, with
permanent legislation into a position of inferiority, then those black men, if they are
really men, are called upon by every consideration of patriotism and loyalty to oppose
such a course by all civilized methods, even though such opposition involves
disagreement with Mr. Booker T. Washington. We have no right to sit silently by while
the inevitable seeds are sown for a harvest of disaster to our children, black and white.
First, it is the duty of black men to judge the South discriminatingly. The present
generation of Southerners are not responsible for the past, and they should not be blindly
hated or blamed for it. Furthermore, to no class is the indiscriminate endorsement of the
recent course of the South toward Negroes more nauseating than to the best thought of
the South. The South is not “solid”; it is a land in the ferment of social change, wherein
forces of all kinds are fighting for supremacy; and to praise the ill the South is to-day
perpetrating is just as wrong as to condemn the good. Discriminating and broad-minded
criticism is what the South needs, — needs it for the sake of her own white sons and
daughters, and for the insurance of robust, healthy mental and moral development.
To-day even the attitude of the Southern whites toward the blacks is not, as so many
assume, in all cases the same; the ignorant Southerner hates the Negro, the workingmen
fear his competition, the money-makers wish to use him as a laborer, some of the
educated see a menace in his upward development, while others—usually the sons of the
masters—wish to help him to rise. National opinion has enabled this last class to maintain
the Negro common schools, and to protect the Negro partially in property, life, and limb.
Through the pressure of the money-makers, the Negro is in danger of being reduced to
semi-slavery, especially in the country districts; the workingmen, and those of the
educated who fear the Negro, have united to disfranchise him, and some have urged his
deportation; while the passions of the ignorant are easily aroused to lynch and abuse any
black man. To praise this intricate whirl of thought and prejudice is nonsense; to inveigh
indiscriminately against “the South” is unjust; but to use the same breath in praising
Governor Aycock, exposing Senator Morgan, arguing with Mr. Thomas Nelson Page,
and denouncing Senator Ben Tillman, is not only sane, but the imperative duty of
thinking black men.
It would be unjust to Mr. Washington not to acknowledge that in several instances he has
opposed movements in the South which were unjust to the Negro; he sent memorials to
the Louisiana and Alabama constitutional conventions, he has spoken against lynching,
and in other ways has openly or silently set his influence against sinister schemes and
unfortunate happenings. Notwithstanding this, it is equally true to assert that on the whole
the distinct impression left by Mr. Washington’s propaganda is, first, that the South is
justified in its present attitude toward the Negro because of the Negro’s degradation;
secondly, that the prime cause of the Negro’s failure to rise more quickly is his wrong
education in the past; and, thirdly, that his future rise depends primarily on his own
efforts. Each of these propositions is a dangerous half-truth. The supplementary truths
must never be lost sight of: first, slavery and race-prejudice are potent if not sufficient
causes of the Negro’s position; second, industrial and common-school training were
necessarily slow in planting because they had to await the black teachers trained by
higher institutions,—it being extremely doubtful if any essentially different development
was possible, and certainly a Tuskegee was unthinkable before 1880; and, third, while it
is a great truth to say that the Negro must strive and strive mightily to help himself, it is
equally true that unless his striving be not simply seconded, but rather aroused and
encouraged, by the initiative of the richer and wiser environing group, he cannot hope for
great success.
In his failure to realize and impress this last point, Mr. Washington is especially to be
criticised. His doctrine has tended to make the whites, North and South, shift the burden
of the Negro problem to the Negro’s shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather
pessimistic spectators; when in fact the burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of
none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to righting these great wrongs.
The South ought to be led, by candid and honest criticism, to assert her better self and do
her full duty to the race she has cruelly wronged and is still wronging. The North—her
co-partner in guilt—cannot salve her conscience by plastering it with gold. We cannot
settle this problem by diplomacy and suaveness, by “policy” alone. If worse comes to
worst, can the moral fibre of this country survive the slow throttling and murder of nine
millions of men?
The black men of America have a duty to perform, a duty stern and delicate,—a forward
movement to oppose a part of the work of their greatest leader. So far as Mr. Washington
preaches Thrift, Patience, and Industrial Training for the masses, we must hold up his
hands and strive with him, rejoicing in his honors and glorying in the strength of this
Joshua called of God and of man to lead the headless host. But so far as Mr. Washington
apologizes for injustice, North or South, does not rightly value the privilege and duty of
voting, belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher
training and ambition of our brighter minds,—so far as he, the South, or the Nation, does
this,—we must unceasingly and firmly oppose them. By every civilized and peaceful
method we must strive for the rights which the world accords to men, clinging
unwaveringly to those great words which the sons of the Fathers would fain forget: "We
hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed
by their Creater with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness."
Source: W. E. Burghardt Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago, 1903).